Corporate Advocacy Program: The best way to manage and repair your business reputation. Hiding negative complaints is only a Band-Aid. Consumers want to see how businesses take care of business. All businesses will get complaints. How those businesses take care of those complaints is what separates good businesses from bad businesses.

While on vacation in Las Vegas in May 2007, we were approached by a guy on the street offering free tickets to shows and dinner if we would tour a new property called Westgate Resorts Planet Hollywood. They, being Westgate salesman David Matelski, took us on a paper tour since that is all they had at that time since it wasn't built yet. After "the tour" was over, we asked for our gifts we were promised but were told that we have to talk to someone who can further tell us about the new and existing properties owned by David Siegal called Westgate Resort/Timeshares. This guy, David, who came and sat down to talk was very pleasant, friendly, and informative. When I said "I don't think so" several times, he got up from the table and brought back Randy Bates, the sales manager, who really poured on the pressure to buy. They both told us everything we wanted to hear about how beautiful it will be and how impressive it will be and showed us all kinds of pictures of what our room will look like. They said that every room has a full kitchen with washer/dryer and showed pictures of hot tubs and big screen TVs and plush leather furniture and huge beds and fancy decorations and beautiful views etc. I kept saying "I don't think so" and they just kept on pouring on the charm. We were told that our maintenence dues would be $436 every other year which didn't seem all that bad. He told us that the dues have not gone up in years for other resorts and if it would go up, it would be just a few dollars. To make the deal even sweeter, we were told that since we don't have a home timeshare yet since it hasn't started being built yet, we were told we would be "given" 3 bonus weeks to use at other Westgate Resorts while our home resort was being built. We were told that we would be given a bonus week for each year until our PH Resort was finished and we could come to Vegas. We were told of automatic upgrades for these bonus weeks. They finally talked me into it and we bought a bi-annual timeshare at PH Las Vegas starting in 2010. WELL!!!! Lie Lie Lie! Everything turned out to be a lie.

In 2008, we booked out 1st "free" bonus week in Florida. We found out it wasn't a "free" week but that it would cost $399. We were going to Daytona Beach Florida so we booked a week at the Westgate in Daytona. We arrived to find this resort to be under construction. We weren't told that we would be staying at a hotel that was being updated. The desk person said that the rooms would not have patio/balcony useage and that the workers start at 8AM daily and that they were currently using air hammers to remove balconies so it was really loud and that we had to allow the workers into our room as they needed to be to do their work. The woman was quite rude when we told her that we were not told of the construction that was going on and that we didn't want to stay there. We ended up cancelling the room in Daytona and we stayed in another resort not owned by Westgate. We did use the 1st bonus week in Orlando Florida in which we stayed for the 2nd week of our vacation. We stayed at Westgate Towers. It was a really nice 2 bedroom suite which I had to fight to get - you know their automatic upgrades. I nearly had to walk out before they finally did what they said they would do and that was to upgrade to a larger room if 1 was available. During that week of vacation we were bothered by them at least 3 times trying to sell us the other week to make our timeshare an annual thing rather than bi-annual and to buy a suite that was larger than what we had or we could add a connecting room to what we already had. They just wouldn't take no for an answer and kept hounding us until we finally met with a salesperson who once again turned on the charm and "lies" to try to get us to buy more time. This is when we found out how we were deceived by our original salesman. It turns out our beautiful 1 bedroom full kitchen, living room and washer/dryer suite was simply a regular hotel room with a queen bed and a sofa sleeper with a tiny fridge and a bathroom sink. There was no "bedroom" as you would think. Everything was in 1 room like any other room at Days Inn. No leather couch, no big screen tv, no full kitchen, no washer/dryer, no bedroom no hot tub and I don't know yet about the view. I was fit to be tied. This saleswoman, Wendy just kept telling us completely different than what the first salesman did. Everything was changed. Nothing was as we were told while on our tour. She finally got up and went to get the sales manager at the time to explain what we REALLY bought rather than what we were told we bought. Eventually, the salesmanager got pissed off at me because I kept saying that is not what we were told by our salesman and starting yelling at us and being a real a*s. I have never heard any salesperson say the things he did to us. It was unbelievable. People were looking from all directions as this guy stood at our table screaming at us. We finally got up from the table and told him to get a life, but in different words and walked away from this lunatic. Later the following year, I called to make my 2nd bonus week reservation. I was told that we don't have any more weeks left. The bonus weeks we were given were only good for 18 months from the date of our timeshare purchase which was Dec 31, 2008 and not as we were told. They also turned out to be $399 a week and not "free" as we were told. They even tried to charge us $499 but when I read the tiny print it did say $399 so at least we got that to go our way. We did not get any other weeks of the 3 weeks we rec'd as "bonus" weeks. I contacted David Matelski our original salesman on 3/21/08 telling him what we were told about the bonus weeks by the corporate office. He said that the certificates were misprinted and that each one should have expired on Dec 31 of 2007, 2008, and 2009 not in 18 months. He told me to contact his salesmanager, Randy Bates and any remaining certificates would be extended accordingly. He gave me his phone number and told me to call him and that he would let Randy know that I am looking to talk to him about them. I must have called this guy a hundred times, leaving a message every time for him to return my call, but he never did. He never called and I never got revised certificates as David told me. Lies, lies and more lies out of them.

When I got my first maintenence dues bill from Westgate, the amount was not $436 as we were told, but $512. It went up $76 before we even had a chance to pay them for our maintenence dues.

So, to sum it up, we didn't get what we were told and shown pictures of, we didn't get any "free bonus weeks" as were were promised, and now we find out that our maintenence dues are $76 more than we signed for on our sales contract. When this was all found out by us as to what was actually to be, we tried to cancel the contract due to false representation but we were told "sorry you bought it, signed a contract and that they will not cancel the sale". I don't know if we have any legal grounds on it. I am hoping that someone will start a class action suit against Westgate for all the lies and sales pitches they use to sell and than it doesn't come true at the end. I will sureSly go along with that.

So to end this report, all I can say is BEWARE! STAY AWAY FROM ANYONE WHO SAYS THEY WORK FOR WESTGATE RESORT/TIMESHARES. YOU TOO WILL BE THEIR NEXT SALES VICTIM.

Corporate Advocacy Program: The best way to manage and repair your business reputation. Hiding negative complaints is only a Band-Aid. Consumers want to see how businesses take care of business. All businesses will get complaints. How those businesses take care of those complaints is what separates good businesses from bad businesses.

AUTHOR: Becker79 - ()

SUBMITTED: Friday, October 11, 2013

POSTED: Friday, October 11, 2013

The best advice is NEVER buy a timeshare anywhere. It is a scam and the so-called timeshare you buy is sold over and over again to other people. It is very difficult to sell your timeshare now and renting isn't in the deal. It will cost you more to buy a timeshare than to rent a hotel room or a full ownership of a condo. Don't do it.

Corporate Advocacy Program: The best way to manage and repair your business reputation. Hiding negative complaints is only a Band-Aid. Consumers want to see how businesses take care of business. All businesses will get complaints. How those businesses take care of those complaints is what separates good businesses from bad businesses.